Jimmy Wales is a name I would wager few have heard of, but his product is probably used by you, your fiends, and your friends’ friends every day. Jimmy Wales is the Co-Founder of Wikipedia, the online public encyclopedia. In creating this, Wales became a civic hero not only for his advances in the use of wikis, but for giving every corner of the globe a free encyclopedia. Born in Huntsville, Alabama, Wales attended classes in a one-room schoolhouse. At a very young age Wales proved to be an avid reader;he would grab any book he could get his hands on, but, most of all he loved to spend time looking through the pages of the Britannica and World Book Encyclopedia. He craved knowledge in those early years, and through life he would take that with him. Entering his later years, he attended Auburn University, where he would get a degree in finance and find a job. In 1994, he took that finance degree to a futures and options trading firm in Illinois, while he spent most of his time in finance reportsthe remainder saw Wales constantly exploreing the Internet. He described his obsession of the Internet even at this early age, and inspired by the initial public offering of Netscape shares in 1995, he decided to try it himself. He left the corporate finance game and became an Internet entrepreneur. ‘Bomis’ would be the fruit of Wales' labor, a user-generated website with cyclical links to other websites called web-rings. But in true Internet fashion its primary draw was, for a time, erotic photographs. It become so popular that in the words of The Atlantic Monthly, Bomis found itself, “positioned as the Playboy of the Internet... it helped guys find guy stuff.” While the Bomis venture would ultimately fail, it did provide Wales the funding to pursue his passion project: a peer-reviewed, online encyclopedia called Nupedia. Years earlier, Wales was into a different venture, online moderation. In the words of some of his friends, Wales has been a bit outspoken at times, and this outspoken nature would lead him in the early 90’s to a forum dealing with the issue of objectivism, where he would meet Larry Sanger a philosophy student from Ohio State. Sanger and Wales had many discussions on the subject and how, if possible a person could, be objective. It became such an impassioned debate that they would eventually meet face to face to talk about it further. The two young innovators would become friends, and years later, when Wales was beginning his encyclopedia and was in need of a credited academic to run it, he asked Sanger to be the Editor in Chief of Nupedia, the free encyclopedia. The idea behind Nupedia was to have experts write entries on their subjects, have them peer reviewed, and make them available online for everyone, with advertising alongside the articles to cover costs. The peer review process was to ensure accuracy and quality on par with that of the printed encyclopedias of the time. The problem, as Wales explained it, was creating a bottleneck; only so many articles could go online at any given time because they were all waiting for peer review. Wales realized in less than a year that it was set for failure, but Sanger would find the solution. Sanger had been happy to work on Nupedia with Wales, but he was worried that the project's pace had slowed. In talking with a long-time friend and programming enthusiast, Ben Kovotis, Sanger expressed his concern: the intensive peer-review process. Kovotis offered a solution: he told Sanger about the concept of a ‘wiki’. The interesting wiki model, as Kovotis would explain, was peer review free and would allow writers to contribute directly to the site; the editors could contribute incrementally when time allowed throughout the project, breaking Nupedia’s bottleneck. Sanger found the idea inspiring and related it to Wales who also saw the benefit. Together, Sanger and Wales created the first Nupedia wiki on January 10, 2001.
Wikipedia ca. 2001
The wikis on Nupedia seemed like a great idea to everyone accept the peer reviewers. The academics that were helping with the project were worried; they thought the mixing of user generated content and excerpt content would damage the reputation of the encyclopedia. And so the wiki project, dubbed Wikipedia by Sanger, was removed from Nupedia’s server and placed on its own within 48 hours of its birth. Sanger and Wales had no idea what would happen with the Wiki project, but to their astonishment, within mere days of putting Wikipedia online, it had more user generated pages then Nupedia had created in 10 months of operation. Wales’ dream of the world's largest encyclopedia was started by accident. This innovation allowed for people from all walks of life to put information online, and the idea grew. It became that Wales didn’t need professionals working for Nupedia to maintain the site, the community began doing it for him. Little by little Wikipedia began filling with the world's information, Wales finally had achieved what he had wanted to see out of Nupedia: a World Wide encyclopedia that was free to anyone who wanted to look. The outcomes of this achievement have been good, but it has met its fair share of criticism. Wales was made an internet celebrity overnight and has been criticized by some to have not included Sanger as a legitimate co-founder. In 2003, Wales set up the Wikimedia Foundation, to which, he gave Wikipedia and its sister projects. After the transfer Wales said it was the “dumbest and the smartest” thing he’d ever done. This allowed for the foundation to seek venture capital funding and donations to help keep Wikipedia ad free. The site, since its founding, became very popular receiving 2.7 billion page views monthly in the US alone and it has been estimated to be worth 3 billion dollars. Another outcome is the term ‘wiki,’ now almost synonymous with Wikipedia, has been used both as a term of transparency and for things which Wales has admitted he never intended. When the site Wikileaks exposed the U.S. D.O.D’s information regarding the Middle East, wars Wales criticized Julian Assange for using the term ‘wiki’, which actually means a collaborative effort to create information, of which Wikileaks is not. The lessons learned from this project have been true of many sites created online. The most inconsequential things can lead to some of the greatest leaps forward. Wikipedia started as a way to help fill the pages of Nuepedia, but it became the encyclopedia. Like many things on the Internet, the scholarly community has long criticized Wikipedia for its potential to be vandalized and that as it is open to anyone, can be “misleading” in its fact, according to some scholars. In page-by-page match between the encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia, Wikipedia stood the test. Many science pages were on par with its collegiate counterpart, but errors were seen on both, none of which being egregious. The number-one point made by the professional community “Wikipedia needs a good editor,” mainly someone to make the articles a bit clearer. Another lesson learned from this, for all potential civic heros to note, is that one can accomplish a lot by giving people freedom, and the Internet has shown us that. In 1994, the web was less then 100 pages; by 2005 in was reported to be around 1 billion, with 90,000 being added monthly. Wikipedia has grown at a similar rate. In 2001, there were a couple hundred articles; now in 2011 it has almost 20 million articles in every language under the sun. One can never guess what will happen in the future, but by allowing yourself to be open you can encounter an amazing amount of people who will to help to promote the common good. Wikipedia, formed to give free information to the masses, and Wales has undoubtedly done this. Now you may ask will all public heros be able to attain this kind of success? Probably not, but this story is one of inspiration; this project went from failure to success, and that kind of innovation and tenacity must be recognized. Wikipedia is a beacon of hope for all those who wish to change the world.
Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia
Born in Huntsville, Alabama, Wales attended classes in a one-room schoolhouse. At a very young age Wales proved to be an avid reader;he would grab any book he could get his hands on, but, most of all he loved to spend time looking through the pages of the Britannica and World Book Encyclopedia. He craved knowledge in those early years, and through life he would take that with him. Entering his later years, he attended Auburn University, where he would get a degree in finance and find a job.
In 1994, he took that finance degree to a futures and options trading firm in Illinois, while he spent most of his time in finance reportsthe remainder saw Wales constantly exploreing the Internet. He described his obsession of the Internet even at this early age, and inspired by the initial public offering of Netscape shares in 1995, he decided to try it himself. He left the corporate finance game and became an Internet entrepreneur.
‘Bomis’ would be the fruit of Wales' labor, a user-generated website with cyclical links to other websites called web-rings. But in true Internet fashion its primary draw was, for a time, erotic photographs. It become so popular that in the words of The Atlantic Monthly, Bomis found itself, “positioned as the Playboy of the Internet... it helped guys find guy stuff.” While the Bomis venture would ultimately fail, it did provide Wales the funding to pursue his passion project: a peer-reviewed, online encyclopedia called Nupedia.
Years earlier, Wales was into a different venture, online moderation. In the words of some of his friends, Wales has been a bit outspoken at times, and this outspoken nature would lead him in the early 90’s to a forum dealing with the issue of objectivism, where he would meet Larry Sanger a philosophy student from Ohio State. Sanger and Wales had many discussions on the subject and how, if possible a person could, be objective. It became such an impassioned debate that they would eventually meet face to face to talk about it further.
Sanger had been happy to work on Nupedia with Wales, but he was worried that the project's pace had slowed. In talking with a long-time friend and programming enthusiast, Ben Kovotis, Sanger expressed his concern: the intensive peer-review process. Kovotis offered a solution: he told Sanger about the concept of a ‘wiki’. The interesting wiki model, as Kovotis would explain, was peer review free and would allow writers to contribute directly to the site; the editors could contribute incrementally when time allowed throughout the project, breaking Nupedia’s bottleneck. Sanger found the idea inspiring and related it to Wales who also saw the benefit. Together, Sanger and Wales created the first Nupedia wiki on January 10, 2001.
The outcomes of this achievement have been good, but it has met its fair share of criticism. Wales was made an internet celebrity overnight and has been criticized by some to have not included Sanger as a legitimate co-founder. In 2003, Wales set up the Wikimedia Foundation, to which, he gave Wikipedia and its sister projects. After the transfer
The lessons learned from this project have been true of many sites created online. The most inconsequential things can lead to some of the greatest leaps forward. Wikipedia started as a way to help fill the pages of Nuepedia, but it became the encyclopedia. Like many things on the Internet, the scholarly community has long criticized Wikipedia for its potential to be vandalized and that as it is open to anyone, can be “misleading” in its fact, according to some scholars. In page-by-page match between the encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia, Wikipedia stood the test. Many science pages were on par with its collegiate counterpart, but errors were seen on both, none of which being egregious. The number-one point made by the professional community “Wikipedia needs a good editor,” mainly someone to make the articles a bit clearer.
Another lesson learned from this, for all potential civic heros to note, is that one can accomplish a lot by giving people freedom, and the Internet has shown us that. In 1994, the web was less then 100 pages; by 2005 in was reported to be around 1 billion, with 90,000 being added monthly. Wikipedia has grown at a similar rate. In 2001, there were a couple hundred articles; now in 2011 it has almost 20 million articles in every language under the sun.
One can never guess what will happen in the future, but by allowing yourself to be open you can encounter an amazing amount of people who will to help to promote the common good. Wikipedia, formed to give free information to the masses, and Wales has undoubtedly done this. Now you may ask will all public heros be able to attain this kind of success? Probably not, but this story is one of inspiration; this project went from failure to success, and that kind of innovation and tenacity must be recognized. Wikipedia is a beacon of hope for all those who wish to change the world.
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Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales of course